Leaderboard

This is the piece of birdseye maple I'm going to use for the neck. For reference, I've put both neck templates in the neck pocket to show the difference in length.

The black limba is amazing, not sure where Phil sources his timbers but he struck gold with that! Today he’s routed and fitted the truss rod and carbon rods into the neck:

Can you imagine if The Police had their van nicked? *Ring Ring* Hello, police. Hi there, this is Gordon from the police. Our van's been nicked. Jeeze, a police van? Boy you're in trouble. No... well, yes, I suppose you could say its a police van... it's certainly the police van. What? Look, I'm in the police. OK. And our van's been nicked. Right. Well can you like, find it? You're in the police. Yes. Find your own ****ing van before your Sgt finds out. No... I'm not in the police! You said you were! Well in one way I am. I'm recording this, you know. Oh, that's ironic. What? Etc...

“Crikey, that Bongo is ugly!” ”Hold my beer,”

“What do you play?” ”Lead guitar.” ”It’s pronounced LEED.” ”No it’s not. Hold out your hand.”

You'll never take me alive, copper. 😁

I always found the band´s name boring. But I really learned to play the bass by listening to Sting´s bass lines on Regatte De Blanc in 1980, when I had to switch from guitar to bass to be able to join the school´s band. They already had three guitars. 🙂 His bass lines are so good, I immeditaley understood the concept of bass in pop music.

I'm not that happy with all this impersonating myself and the lads. Some of you are going dahn, you slags

I know that feeling 🤓

I’ll just leave this here...

ALL music is derivative, in some way or another. Its just a matter of degree.

Fantastic pictures, tho if I tried that these days I'd definitely be as stuck as Nigel Tufnell... 😕😀

There was me expecting this to be about Fender necks.

Pretty sure I remember reading that Coldplay stole their name from another band anyway. Then they stole their entire repertoire from Unforgettable Fire-era U2, apparently filtered through weak tea and insipid pink blancmange.

As a lot of you I try to do most of the set up and repair work myself on a bass ,especially set up as to an extent its quiet personal to your playing style(bar neck relief, levelling ) I use roto rounds strings and they scratch the hell out of frets. I've tried the different grit fret rubbers that you can get which are ok but take a lot of time and work........but one of these fits the bill perfect https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-nail-buffer-4-in-1/p/0348223....ideal for getting scratches out and buffing back to looking new without taking Much meat off of the frets, £1.20 as well 🙂

Sand it smooth, nothing to lose. It won't hurt the bass and if its the only thing wrong with it. It won't make anything worse that's for sure

I see a Netflix Original series in this:- 'Ring Sting - The Pain That Won't Go Away' 🙂

Concrete... gives it heft.

Can you honestly say that you voluntarily pay more tax than you have to because you think it’s morally right to pay more? I seriously doubt you’d find a single basschat member who feels duty bound to pay more tax than they have to. And as for destroying high streets, that blame lies on many doorsteps. Local council’s mis management of high streets, business rates and parking, old fashioned business models, shops with nothing to offer to make up for the extra prices and ultimately the choice of the consumers who choose where to spend their hard earned and minimum tax paid earnings. Amazon don’t force people to buy from them, they simply offer a better product and consumers vote with their debit cards.

That top cutout...”where’s me washboard? Eh?”

Andy, kindly reassure us that no live pigeon was harmed in the course of this process 😮

It’s too broken that. I’ll give you your £80 back and I’ll sort it 🤦🏻‍♂️😂

This is the one loved enough to have a go at

Who knows the ways of magicians and wizards.

I apologise if I misunderstood the tone of your questions. It sounded to me as if you were saying "all you need is in your amp, onboard preamps are ridiculous and so are their users" reading between the lines. Hence my tone. But it's very possible I misunderstood too. Somehow, in person, we can disagree very strongly and pull each other's leg and keep smiling, but in writing it all can look so damn serious. Especially if the reader has been having a bad day. I've been pretty sick the past few days and had to do a quick run to hospital [1] last night... and I'm a terrible patient, I get really grumpy when I'm ill. So, yes... I'm not going to re-read it all, if you say you didn't mean it the way I took it, I believe you, please accept my apology, and let's keep it cheery edit: [1] by the way it's all good, just a scary false alarm. I just need to be a patient patient, and I'm still grumpy, but not about onboard preamps

Awesome one at a venue that’s new to us. 280 capacity, and a nice big stage. The singer and my eyes lit up at the tall drum riser, as we often like to have an ‘jump off’ competition during our set. First outing with the Mustang, which was flawless, although I did notice the strap buttons were about 1/3rd unscrewed from the body by the end of the set, I’ll be supergluing them in tonight. That face...

Turn up with a banjo and a sliver of buckwheat between your teeth...

Also, it will put my mind at ease when using other cabs as we often do at backline share gigs, I know my own cabs can take what we do but sometimes I've had to drastically wind back on the bass when using other cabs. Be prepared to wait a few weeks if you do order, you won't hear anything after you order, your PayPal receipt will come through and unless you email Max you'll hear nothing till he ships, everything is built on order.

It's a trap!!!

Nathan East showing off his new bass

I’ve played with drummers using click track. My experiences have been mixed, in that those who have practiced/gigged extensively with them have no problem keeping time and retain feel/dynamic (unsurprisingly). However a couple of (good) drummers decided they were going to use them without extensive practice were awful. So I guess be prepared for some “lead up time” and of course a willingness on their part to use a click. It can, for some drummers, be counter intuitive to have a click in their ears, acting like a critical parent 😂😱. I had one say that it took their freedom to be “expressive” away, a bit like peeps saying that theory “kills creativity” 🙄 what he meant to say was “it shows up my tendency to slow down when I get bored/get distracted/tired/remember I forgot to put the bins out/etc.

New head, now with a new volume and distortion pot. I love the slightly squat look of it. I still have the Mark IV but I need to list that for sale at some point.

Oasis?

Sofa shot just landed.. Looking forward to getting my hands on this

That's probably not true. That clarity will enable people to hear your bass lines through the racket made by those loud guitars and shed-building drummers. Of course you'll need the right amount of volume, but you will require less volume to cut through if your sound is clear and well defined.

This is all great, and then you play without your pa and have to rely on a house pa incapable of projecting sound below 1KHz run by Norman whose been doing this job 60 years man and boy and is subsequently as deaf as a post, and his culpable assistant keV who can't quite work out how to tie his shoe laces or keep his trousers from descending beneath his derrière. At which point you need a big bastard bass rig in order for the band to actually hear you, since Norman is convinced you can catch IEMs from kissing someone funny, and won't have any truck with that funny stuff on his 'stage'....

The word "more" suggests you do some already.

The area for the neck heel base has now been cut out of the purpleheart so that the neck can seat - in a sort of normal way - to the Sapele back: Once the front edge has been carved to mirror the neck carve, the neck should drop down into the pocket and seat properly: It's probably going to be easier to do this before I glue the purpleheart to the back. Then the walnut will be a similar process. Dunno...but there's half a chance this might work! Can you see, by the way, how the purpleheart is already darkening - and this is just with air exposure (it's been in the cellar so there's been no light) It will end up a completely uniform colour.

I impersonated Sting once by taking off my shirt and acting like a self righteous preaching pr#@k. Does that count? 😂

Spare a thought for the poor little so-n-so that eagerly opened his tenth birthday present of... Cork sheets. ...

That's all the encouragement I need . Will start another thread, rather than introducing noise into yours but will have to wait till I have time tomorrow.

Ooooh look, another reply. Is this the inevitable metal band who've not read the advert at all ? No. But I don't think they've read the advert at all.

*Ring Ring* Hello, police. Hi, it's Gordon again, about the stolen van. Hi Gordon. I've been talking to the band, and firstly I have to apologise for before. Oh that's OK. You're in the police band you say? Yes. Did you play at the Chief Super's birthday party? Um, no. Oh really? ... I'm going to need to call you back again... *Click*

Ok so, the intention is nice, but I think you're missing many, many, many aspects of the string making. 1- does fatter strings requires more tension to resonate etc... : no, it is not as black and white as it may be. GHS released some years ago a pdf explaining what influences tension and tone, in fact B and E strings are way more flexible than the other strings, and the A and D strings are the stiffer, generally speaking (by saying generally speaking I'm just saying that after decades of trying strings, praticing, gigging, educating bass students, and also comparing the tension charts of the manufacturers). It depends on material used cos' the weight of the string has an impact on its tension too, elasticity, sustain, ... some says they get fatter tones with flexible stainless strings for example, some will say "ear James Jamerson and his P/labella flats legendary tone"... a tone that was also tailored by a comperssor, a tube amp, a 15" cab... not all the time cos' it was mainly directly plugged in a console. 2- fatter strings = more harmonics: again no, cos' it depends on human perception, theory says "human pitch perception is between 20 and 20,000 Hz", but we all know that we bassists struggle to transcribe basslines easily, right ? it is way easier to transcribe a trumpet solo for example, because our perception, our ears are designed to hear in the high mids, high range. That's always the same misconception that we all read about amps and cabs: the lower a cab can go, the better it is, missing the harmonics suite fact a sound = it's fundamental + 1st harmonic that doubles the fundamental rate the octave so, then the fifth, then again the 2nd octave higher, then the third etc... for a C1 it gives this C1 C2 G2 C3 E3 and on and on This is why we'll never see amps and cabs going down past 40Hz, because that wouldn't make any sense, that would not be ... musical. The B0 is rated 30.87 Hz @ A440 tuning, so it's impossible to hear its fundamental on 99% of amps and cabs on the planet, some will probably say "yeah but the lower the fundamental is, the more the harmonics you'll get in the harmonics suite" nope because, again: human perception. Some tunes their instrument @ F#0 for example 23.21 Hz, 2nd harmonic F#1 46.24 so, then 3rd harrmonic the fifth C# 2 69.30 etc... it will be even complicated to hear the octave fundamental @ 46.24... So, in theory, using maths: yes there are more harmonics with lower fundamentals, but in practice our brain will interpret high mids pitches as fuller harmonics (Jaco Pastorius and his use of true harmonics, mainly on the D and G strings for instance). So as many said here on this thread, the "use your ears", and I would tell you also "use your fingers" thing is the way to go. Feelings, nothing more than feelings... haaa haaa haaa What were the strings used ? brand, material, weight, etc... did you do comparisons between materials, brands, etc.... The GHS pdf here http://www.ghsrep.net/uploads/2/2/2/5/22258814/ghs_bass_string_guide.pdf